Almost everybody knows that there is a greater risk of an accident when driving while distracted. Many people have caused motor vehicle accidents after minor distractions such as changing the radio station or lighting a cigarette. Lately, with the proliferation of cellphones that are capable of sending text messages, a huge increase in motor vehicle accidents have been recorded, especially when young drivers are involved. Many such accidents have led to the loss of such young people.
Texting while driving requires the driver to look at their cellphone to read the message and, as cellphone keyboards or virtual keyboards are very small, look at their cellphones while typing. For an expert at texting, this may take only a few seconds, but traveling at 55 miles per hour, a vehicle travels 403 feet in five seconds, more than the length of a football field. In those five seconds, a pedestrian may step out in front of the vehicle or another vehicle in front may stop to make a turn. Again, this is how accidents happen.
Many states have passed laws to restrict the use of a cellphone while driving, many allowing hands-free operation while driving. Hands-free operation is still a distraction (imaging a couple having a heated argument while one of them is driving), but does not require handling of the cellphone or entering information into the keyboard. It has been found that legislating the use of cellphones is about as effective as legislating the use of seatbelts. We all know someone who refuses to wear their seatbelt and we will likely know someone who texts while driving, even when such activities are illegal and may result in a ticket and/or fine.
It is therefore extremely difficult to curb cellphone usage for a majority of the population, but what about young drivers who are still under the influence of their parents? This category of drivers accounts for the majority of accidents involving such distraction, possibly because young adults are quite verse in texting and use texting as a primary form of communications with friends and family.
The prior art includes applications that a parent can load on their young driver's cellphones. One such application is LifeSaver. Once loaded on the young driver's phone, the LifeSaver application blocks phone usage while the young driver is driving. In this, the application senses that the cellphone is in a moving vehicle through the use of global positioning and accelerometer and block usage or informs parents of usage. Unfortunately, the young driver population is technology savvy and quickly learns how to disable or bypass any application that has been loaded on their cellphone. Further, it has been found that the more difficult it is to configure such applications, the quicker a parent will abort installation or install the application with minimal protection against the user (young driver) tampering with the application.
What is needed is a system that will prevent usage of a cellphone while driving.